


Untitled Zombie Novel

by AlexLKerr



Category: Original Work
Genre: Action/Adventure, Apocalypse, Fandom Allusions & Cliches & References, Gen, Horror, Modern Era, Pop Culture, Students, Teenagers, University, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-11
Updated: 2014-09-12
Packaged: 2018-02-16 22:43:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2287148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexLKerr/pseuds/AlexLKerr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Follow Susan Kaspersky, a competent wilderness instructor/counselor & full-time grad student in ecology, and Robert "Bird" Carson, a high school freshman tech & blog geek, as they witness their small city's first outbreak and do their best to survive as the world breaks down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Susan Kaspersky - The Grocery Store

"You," Susan called, pointing to a teenager with their iPhone who was dumbly staring at the man that'd just collapsed to the floor, "call nine-one-one."

 The teenager blanched and nodded. Susan turned back to the man writhing and moaning on the black-and-white checkered tile. 

"Sir?" she asked sharply, her voice cutting through his anguished noises, "I'm an emergency first responder. May I help you?"

That was as far as she got.

Her voice demanding the ambulance had echoed through the medium-sized mom 'n pop grocery store and drawn a small crowd. It wasn't expected but it also wasn't surprising the group would include some asshole who thought he was more competent with emergencies than she was.

When Susan got shoved out of the way waiting for the collapsed man's response, she instinctively went with it. She wasn't interested in starting a childish pushing match with this guy in front of a man in pain needing help. She moved further down, kneeling near the man's legs and watched, stunned, at the new guy that'd decided to take over.

New Guy couldn't be bothered to listen to the man. Instead he quickly sat him up and started slapping him on the back saying, "all right man, it's okay dude, just focus on breathing all right?"

"Do you _know_ him?" Susan asked, concerned. New Guy ignored her while "tending" to the man. Susan ruled he couldn't possibly: he wasn't using a real name when speaking to him nor was he helping in any appropriate way whatsoever. Especially since now the man seemed to be weakly pushing and shoving New Guy away. A couple times she heard the man say something sounding suspiciously like "no" and "stop" between gasps but New Guy continued his willful ignorance of the man's appeals. Susan backed up and folded her arms. She was pretty sure at the end of all this New Guy would get charged with assault or at the very least sued to his last cent for providing unwanted, unqualified care.

Susan knew New Guy wasn't qualified because she  _was_  qualified. When a person collapses, coughing and wheezing but still capable of refusing help, you back off and just wait for the ambulance. Even if the man had given her permission to help, sitting him up and slapping him on the back had been a serious risk to the man's health.

"Hey man, you need to stop," Susan called, tapping New Guy on the shoulder as he struggled to keep holding onto the man. Apparently New Guy was just as deaf to her as he was the distressed guy on the floor. "Hey! Seriously!" She shook his shoulder. "Let him go," she insisted.

Finally he clued in that she was present and instead of cooperating he flung his arm backwards to hit her hand off his shoulder.

"Excuse me! He's choking - I'm trying to help him!" New Guy yelled at her.

"I don't think he's choking - you're doing this wrong!" she replied quickly. It came out sounding like a whiny plea and as such New Guy immediately started ignoring her again. Fucking alpha male bullshit.

The man wrenched free and successfully rolled out of New Guy's clutch. He crab-crawled away from him, slamming against a wall and knocking over a rack of potato chips. He started waving frantically and shouting.

"Get away! Get out!" The man screamed, his eyes wild, sweat streaming down his fever-red face and neck.

Susan stood up slowly, a sense of icy dread beginning to trickle in as she watched New Guy crawl after him on the floor. The sick man seemed bonkers: whether it was fever delirium or he'd always been crazytown she wasn't sure but either way it was pretty damn clear the guy wasn't firing on all four cylinders and possibly dangerous.

"Get the fuck away from me! Everybody get the fuck out now!" the man bellowed in panic, gesturing for New Guy to stay away.

Unlike the rest of the wide-eyed, frozen crowd watching the scene like a spectacle - the general phenomena of gaper's block in full action on a smaller scale inside this modest grocery store - Susan was more interested in leaving now. The man was obviously ill, terrified, libel to lash out violently... and with New Guy's determination to be a hero she had very little to offer. Not to mention the guy seemed desperate for everyone to get out anyway. She'd be of more use if she went outside to wave the ambulance down.

Undeterred, New Guy continued his slow approach: "Hey man. It's okay, dude. Just calm down. You're all right."

Susan rolled her eyes. She was on the verge of turning to leave when the man began sobbing and brokenly crying, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

That and a noticeable bulge under the guy's jacket convinced her she _really_ needed to leave.

She turned to go and came up short against the wall of people surrounding them: two middle-aged men in suits, one mother clutching her toddler, the teen-aged boy that'd called the ambulance, and a twenty-something couple, all mesmerized and slack-jawed. As a petite twenty-five year old herself, she assessed the group, shouted, "everyone come on! We should go - now!" and grabbed the teenaged boy - the only person there that was shorter and smaller than her - and shoved him forward.

"Hey! Wha-" the boy called out, his voice cracking into a squeak at the end, surprised to be getting manhandled backwards and away from the crowd.

"Did you call nine-one-one?" she asked sharply, distracting him enough to push him back further.

"Yeah yeah they're on their way," he answered, his hands grasping her arms.

"Good. We need to get out to give the paramedics space," she replied quickly. She got them to the end of the aisle, the boy having reluctantly allowed her to hurry him towards the exit, when the entire group gasped loudly and someone shouted, "he's got a gun!"

Susan and the boy both stopped at once to look at the small huddle of people surrounding the scene at the back of the store. A split second later Susan grabbed the boy to edge around the aisle to get out of any gun's trajectory. 

Someone screamed, the entire circle widened, and New Guy's voice could be heard above the throng. The woman with the toddler turned and started racing towards Susan and the boy. Nothing like protecting a child to get you to snap out of it and leave a dangerous situation. As she approached them Susan could hear New Guy's shouts.

"Don't do it, man! Don't! It's not worth it! It's not worth it!"

The gun went off.

Everyone jumped and slapped their hands to their ears at the sound. The toddler screamed and cried, someone shouted "oh my god," and the sound of New Guy's reassurances filtered through: "it's gonna be okay. It'll be all right, man. S'all over."

The mother was almost at the exit when she overheard New Guy and stopped, believing the danger was over and interested in witnessing the fallout. The boy tried to break free of Susan's hold.

"Let me go! Lemme see!" He yelled, trying his best to dislodge her. Susan kept him there with pursed lips, looking back at the small circle of people, trying to see properly herself.

"I don't..." she trailed off, not knowing exactly what she was planning to say but it didn't matter anyway because suddenly New Guy let loose with a blood-curdling scream that tapered off into wet gags just as the entire group exclaimed as one in horrified repulsion.

At once Susan was facing down a stampede of shouting, panicked people. She grabbed the boy, shouted, " _Go_!" and this time she didn't have to tell him twice. 

They flooded out of the grocery store, the woman with her toddler getting out first and rushing to her minivan in the small parking lot. Susan pulled the boy to the side after they'd exited, allowing the people behind them to filter out openly onto the blacktop ahead. The sounds of sirens and honking vehicles roared over the screams of a woman - one half of the twenty-something couple Susan had noted before - being held back by one of the middle-aged men as an ambulance sped into the lot.

"He's still in there! He's in there! They got him!" she cried, twisting and struggling against the man's hold, trying to get back in. "Brandon!  _Brandon_!" she screamed desperately, completely inconsolable.

A heavy slam to the store's plexiglass window next to her had Susan jumping back.

"Shit! Fuck-" she murmured. The boy gasped and stumbled away, dragging her with him, now unabashedly holding onto her with white knuckles as he stared through the window. Susan followed the boy's gaze.

It was New Guy... crouching low with a bloody, torn-out throat, pieces of flesh hanging and swaying off his neck as crazed bloodshot eyes stared hungrily at them. Before she could put two and two together the guy launched himself at the plexiglass again, damaging his already ravaged face into a mangled mess.

"Jesus Christ..." she whispered, backing away. Through the translucent barrier she saw the sick man that'd collapsed before dart past New Guy heading straight for the door looking just as rabid and predatory.

Susan watched helplessly as the man reached the door at the same time a team of paramedics she hadn't even noticed unloaded out of the ambulance at the entrance.

"No!" Susan shouted, "lock the door! Lock the god damned door!" she screamed as the man burst into the waiting arms of the closest paramedic and attacked.

"Oh  _fuck_!" she heard the boy next to her cry, watching with her as the paramedics attempted restraint techniques. A loud shriek exploded over the scene as another figure shot out from inside the store.

" _BRANDON_!"  

Brandon launched himself onto the lead paramedic hovering over the sick man, still trying to restrain him. A minivan sped out of the parking lot leaving behind the smell of burnt rubber. A car followed in its wake, nearly spinning into oncoming traffic.

_THWACK!_

The plexiglass window cracked under New Guy's continuing assault but it still held. She glanced his way, terrified he'd get through with only just one or two more body hits. He'd stopped though, just snarling at her, and she stared back, stunned yet still somehow fascinated. The primitive wheels were turning in New Guy's mind as his gaze wandered beyond them and off to the side - to the paramedics. He gave them one last dismissive look and shot towards the exit.

A third paramedic had been trying to get Brandon off his coworker when Brandon turned on him, bared his teeth and chomped down on his arm. The paramedic cried out and backed up. Brandon was about to lurch at him when his girlfriend's scream for him ripped through whatever awareness he still had and turned in her direction. New Guy vaulted himself at the bitten paramedic as Brandon zeroed in on his girlfriend.

The middle-aged man holding her let go of the girl to get away. Brandon snarled as she ran to him in tears.

Susan wanted to yell to the girl to stop - to get away from him - but she couldn't risk drawing attention to herself. New Guy had finished with the third paramedic, the sick man had attacked the fourth, and they were both bearing down on the driver as he'd just gotten out of the ambulance to help.

The girl raced to her boyfriend, screamed when he tackled her instead, and continued her terrified then tortured screams as Brandon began to eat her alive at her waist.

Susan felt something tug at her wrist. She jumped and flinched away to find it was only the boy.

"We gotta get outta here!" he whispered. She stared at him. He tugged her harshly again and she stumbled. "C'mon... please," he begged and now she realized he was crying. "Please, dude they're gonna see us," he whimpered. She nodded numbly and let him pull her around the corner of the building next to the dumpsters.

"Where's... um..." Susan gulped, "where's your phone?" She asked, not thinking clearly. "We gotta... we gotta call the police..."

The kid was shaking as badly as she was but he stood his ground.

"No. No we gotta go, c'mon," he said, grabbing her hand and pulling her towards the back of the building to reach the alley.

The grocery store was a neighborhood favorite, one of the town's "best kept secrets," tucked away on a quiet side street of the sprawling university town. When it came to finding the best and cheapest international gourmet deli meats and cheeses, this was the place to go.  

The alley was a straight shot north towards the residential district or south heading closer to downtown. The two of them stumbled, shocky and drained, into a jog headed north. The sound of sirens and car horns increased along with what sounded like gunfire. They ran faster.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please comment/review/kudos if you can spare the time! ~ Alex


	2. Bird Carson - The Alley

Son to Melanie Carson, brother to nine year old Stacy Carson, and dedicated blogger at the ripe age of fourteen, Robert "Bird" Carson ran as fast as his scrawny legs could take him, holding the woman's hand as hard as he could and receiving equal pressure back. 

The broken cement gravel crunched under his sneakers. They were passing the back doors of the other small businesses lining the same street as the grocery store. The other side of the alley bordered a rundown back parking lot of an assisted-living complex. At the sight of it neither the woman nor Bird were interested in suggesting it as a safe haven, some atavistic sense tipping them off its proximity was too dangerous. The woman directed them north, towards their small city's more affluent suburban sprawl, and they ran.

Mom had texted him earlier saying she was going to be late at the lab and would he mind picking up some Kielbasa on his way home from school. He'd replied "no problem" and texted his sister to let her know he wouldn't be there: if she wanted to wait for him after practice she could but otherwise she'd have to walk home alone. The key was under the fake weighted pumpkin. Should be home by five-thirty. Double lock the door behind you.

Bird had walked to the grocer's, idly flipping through apps on his phone checking for messages and interactions on his various emails and social media pseudonyms now that he was out of range of his high school's site blocks. He'd thrown on his ear buds too given that he really needed to get through this album "Nevermind" by the band Nirvana. Laurie Sheldon swore by it and if he wanted to give her a call later tonight to ask her out he had to have something to start with. It was a bonus that he actually did like the band.

When the man had stumbled and collapsed in the store, Bird had already been stopped dead center in the middle of an aisle. Headphones off, he'd been staring at his phone, scrolling through his dash on Tumblr, the cold package of Kielbasa sausage thawing under his arm. 

Bird followed about five hundred different blogs and it'd seemed like they were all active right now. Some of them still had the regular fare but others had begun suspending their usual geek and fandom news and commentary. Instead blogs and reblogs were filtering in, reporting real eyewitness accounts of small bizarre civilian attacks sweeping through major cities in the U.S. and Europe... and all seriously neglecting the "gore" tag. "This fucker BIT ME" - with a close-up of a girl's arm bleeding from what looked like human teeth marks attached - had been reblogged over twenty thousand times with additional corroborating photos and warnings. Word was spreading that some weird kind of underground zombie quislings cult had been unleashed. There was still a lot of confusion though: each and every blogger was scrambling to figure out the truth: was it a real virus? Were the dead reanimating? Were they... really... "zombies"? 

It seemed like this was a group of hardcore zombie fans gone rogue. Through deep web rings and anonymous IRCs they could have coordinated a date and time to attack as a grotesque publicity stunt for The Walking Dead. As a result, warnings and banners were going up, influential bloggers urging others  _not_  to call them zombies because that'd be "giving them what they want."

All thoughts went out the window when the woman had singled him out to dial nine-one-one though. He'd dutifully called, worried about the wheezing, groaning man on the floor at the back of the store. He gave the dispatcher their location, stuttered his explanation of the situation, and accidentally  hung up on her when the guy started shouting at everybody to get away from him.

The gun went off and he heard some guy shouting promises that everything was over. Bird figured the sick dude had been suicidal all along. Even the lady with her toddler had stopped and turned to see what was going on. He thought he was justified to try to get closer to see.

The woman had held him back though. After a few counts of shocked silence from everyone inside, a guy's strangled scream erupted from the gathering and before he knew it everybody had stumbled back and turned to chase them out of the store in panic. 

Whatever happened after that was still too difficult to grasp. Bird just felt his lungs tightening as his feet ate the ground. Luckily his asthma had gone mostly into remission about two years ago; he was doing okay and keeping up.

They were a few blocks away from the end of the local business strip. Bird could see the roof of first house in the distance and tried to run faster like the woman next to him. She was good, Bird realized. He wasn't a runner but he knew when people had good form and she had it: shoulders straight, knees high, head up, breath steady. On the heels of that thought she came down on a loose rock with her right foot and swore when it shifted her ankle.

"Shit - are you okay?" he whispered just as a back door of a small electronics store slammed open and two employees wearing khakis and name tags pinned to their Polos burst out into the alley behind them, eyes wide and confused. 

"What the  _fuck_  man-" Bird heard one of them shout.

The woman ignored them, stumbled forward and tripped into a limping jog.

"Yeah I'm good just keep going," she said determinedly, obviously running through the pain. The employees behind them started following her lead, jogging up the alley about twenty yards back. "First house we get to, okay?" she added breathlessly.

"There's people behind us," Bird said. The woman immediately glanced back. "They're not bleeding," she said heavily, letting the unspoken significance of that hang between them. 

"Hey!  _Hey_!" one of the employees called, trying to get their attention. Bird almost turned when the woman tugged his arm.

"Ignore them," she ordered. Bird obeyed and kept running.

"What's going on?!" the same employee shouted again, "do you know?!  _Hey_!  _HEY_!"

Finally the woman turned around. Bird followed her lead, still holding her hand, and got his first good view of the alley straight south. They'd been running on an incline and he could see well past the grocery store they'd come from now.

"Oh my god," Bird whispered. Beyond the employees running to catch up to them, others had found their way to this small unkempt alley through the back door exits of their respective businesses. 

What shocked Bird though was they were all just standing out there in the middle of the road, talking in small circles and groups, looking at their phones and taking seats on the crates and pallets against the walls. It looked like a mass fire drill down the entire rundown alley, everyone seemingly waiting for an all-clear that Bird was seriously pretty sure wouldn't be coming. He spotted a few smart people running clear across the neighboring parking lot to get to the assisted-living apartments... but otherwise it just looked like an impromptu out back alleyway block party of mingling townies.

Either the woman next to him hadn't taken that in yet or just didn't care because the first words out of her mouth were directed only to the two electronics guys quickly closing in on them.

"Shut up and  _run_!" she yelled harshly, a mixture of panic and fury in her voice. Her last word was drowned out by a loud explosion that blew over the entire area, shaking the ground beneath them. 

Everyone up and down the alley reacted instinctively, crouching and slamming their hands over their heads from the earsplitting blast. The two employees jumped and turned, unconsciously grabbing each other's arms, and stumbled their way backwards. Bird felt the woman grip his shoulder, twist him around and cover his back with her body.  Panicked screams and cries lit up a split-second later as the people in the alley ran for cover. Bird clutched the woman and watched past her shoulder, mesmerized at the scene below. People shouting and terrified, folding themselves against the back walls and huddling in groups together just as a second explosion rented the air and shook the ground.

The woman gripped him tighter through the worst of it and shouted something to him that he couldn't hear under the onslaught. She pulled him up to his full height and gave him a push to start running again, this time ahead of her. He took the gesture for what it was and moved as fast as he could, feeling her hand against the center of his back, a tacit reminder she was still there and he couldn't slow down.

Just as they reached the top of the alley's incline and saw the first row of houses, a new wave of screams echoed from below that had Bird's blood running cold.

The woman must have felt the same way because the two of them couldn't help themselves. Both stopped and turned around to see the cause of it. 

Far in the distance, way further south than the grocery store, a group had gathered by the back door of one of the buildings, no doubt people coming to an injured party's aid. Likely someone staggering in from outside and lucking out to find safety in the back alley like the others. 

Now they were breaking up in wild disarray though, horrified and angry shrieks and shouts shattering the relatively peaceful atmosphere that'd reigned in the back road before. Everyone yelling at each other to  _GO GO GO_  and  _RUN_  and  _GET AWAY_   while others who weren't fast enough tripped under the rough terrain and got trampled under the now-frantic crowd.  

The source of it came into view as people cleared. Bird had to squint to see; smoke from the explosions messing up his vision. He'd recently gotten contacts though: his sight was supposedly better than twenty-twenty. It took a second to focus but his view eventually cleared.

His breath caught when he realized what he was seeing. A woman was hovering over and clawing into a prone body on the ground, blood pooling and spattering out onto the cement as she ravaged the corpse beneath her, face and long hair dripping dark red.

Bird looked away, overwhelmed, barely able to breathe. He broke into a cold sweat and started swallowing repeatedly, trying to keep his lunch down as the ground spun faster and faster. He folded over and gagged. He was about to collapse when arms wrapped around his stomach and chest to hold him up. The woman's voice filtered directly into his ear, loud and demanding, cutting through his nausea.

"Get up! Get over it, kid!  _Now_!" she yelled, thrusting him back up and pushing him. "They're gonna head this way we need to  _go_!" she yelled coldly. Bird nodded and hobbled into a numb, rubbery run. He almost threw up again when he glanced back to realize she was right: a veritable sea of screaming, panicked people were headed straight for them. The woman and the dead body she'd been hovering over were gone from where he'd just seen them.

The woman tugged him to face forward, her hand a vise on his forearm as she led him down the rest of the alley and out onto a small, evenly paved suburban street. Bird let himself be led as he took in their new surroundings.

It was eerily quiet. The suburb was nestled inside a geographic land dip, a natural barrier that muffled the noise and terror emanating from the small city less than a mile south. More disturbing was the fact that the news apparently hadn't spread: a block away kids were playing on their trampoline in the back yard. People were outside gardening, walking their dogs. A man close by was grilling and next door Bird caught sight of a football game on TV.

"GET INSIDE! GET INSIDE _NOW_!" the woman screamed, her voice hoarse and desperate as she kept running. She sounded nuts, Bird realized. He saw the people turn in her direction, confused and maybe even annoyed that she was breaking the peace and quiet. The man grilling had stopped to just stare at them, beer in hand. She stopped in the street for a second, looking around and coming to the same conclusion as Bird. "I'M SERIOUS! THIS IS AN EMERGENCY! GET INTO YOUR HOUSES NOW! SOME..." she paused, breathless and obviously at a loss, "SOMETHING'S COMING!" she screamed. Bird realized she was shouting through tears. "RUN HOME!" she cried.

With that, she took off again, now headed straight for the man that'd been grilling out front. At the obvious beeline, the man dropped his tongs on the wooden edge of his front porch and began to cross the lawn. Getting a better look at him, Bird came up short: late-thirties maybe, taking heavy authoritative strides towards them, sporting a faded baby-girl pink apron with frills around the edges over work-worn flannel and dark denim jeans.

The man's expression bore no awareness of his image. He was frowning, brow furrowed with serious concern, reaching them just as the woman called out.

"Please help us-"

"-Wha's goin' on?" He asked, a deep southern accent noticeable as he wiped his hands off on the apron.

"Fucking zombies man!" Bird shrieked, surprising even himself he could hit that pitch.

The man's eyebrow raised and pursed his lips, clearly unimpressed.

"-No! No it's... We don't know what it is-" the woman tried to backtrack, "you must've heard the explosions. There's some kind of attack happening. We-we gotta get inside,  _please_!" she begged, "Help us. You've gotta help us!"

The man had moved his gaze in the direction of the city when she'd mentioned the explosions. He had to squint to see the smoke still billowing out and dissipating into the sky. But it was undeniably there once he looked. By the time she'd finished, his expression had shifted back to justified worry. He looked at the two of them and gave an imperceptible nod.

"Yeah okay. C'mon," he whispered, reaching to place a light hand on Bird's shoulder to push him towards the house first. They started off at a brisk jog over the lawn.

"We got out through the alley - there are more people on their way. We're just the first," the woman briefed breathlessly. They reached the front door and the man ushered them in. Bird and the woman entered and stopped, numbly watching him head straight for his cell phone on the kitchen table. The woman brushed sweat-soaked hair off her face and tried to put it up in a pony tail. Bird saw her hands were shaking so hard she had to give up. The man gestured for them to calm down as he dialed and listened. His expression darkened.

"Nine-one-one's busy," he murmured, hanging up.

"They're taking calls from downtown. We're not lying about this. We gotta go before the rest of the survivors - and whatever's attacking - come here," the woman said, her voice trembling with adrenaline. "Do you have a car?"

The man eyed them, considering.

"Listen, if you're not gonna help us we're gonna go find somebody who will," the woman said impatiently, a hint of hysteria filtering through. Bird moved closer to her, getting a grip on the back folds of her blazer.

The man exhaled, shook his head and grabbed the keys from a hook by the kitchen window.

"f'you're havin' me on, I'd give y'all credit anyway," he said roughly, shuffling back to them and opening the front door. "Truck's outside. Let's go."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please comment/kudos/reply if you can spare the time! ~ Alex


End file.
